This Is For (W is for Wings)
by FortySevens
Summary: This is For: A series of mostly unconnected one-shots based on self-generated 1word prompts. W is for Wings, continuation of F is for Feathers: "Before I tell you, just uh, no jokes, all right?" "Jokes?" Clint sputtered, his first words since they got back to the Tower. "How in the world is any of this remotely funny?"


**W is for Wings (Clint/Darcy)**

Ask and ye shall apparently (eventually) receive. More wingfic.

**Right After**

Steve's eyes were wide as Darcy finally looked up from the leather cuff in her hands, "So you're _not_ a mutant?"

"No. I am not."

She was still toying with the band clenched between tight fists when a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention, and she looked over in time to see Clint sign something at Natasha, who turned her narrowed gaze back to Darcy, "What _are_ you then?" She snapped. "An Asgardian?"

Glancing over to Thor, who stood over her shoulder with his arms crossed over his chest and a concerned frown on his face, Darcy shook her head in time with him, "No, I'm not."

Darcy bit her lip, one hand brushing over the back of her neck, the tips of her fingers tracing over the spines of the impressions her feathers left in her skin, and she trailed them over her shoulder blade before shaking her head, "Before I tell you, just uh, no jokes, all right?"

"_Jokes_?" Clint sputtered, his first words since they got back to the Tower. "How in the world is _any_ of this remotely funny?"

Darcy winced, and then let out a pained sigh, "Well. It's definitely not."

They room was deadly silent as they waited.

"Look," she took another deep breath. "I am a fairy."

**Right Before**

On the roof of Rockefeller Center, Natasha effortlessly glided through the throng of partygoers milling around the garden, easily deflecting attempts to get drawn into conversation as she sidled up next to Clint, gently nudging him, "Seriously Barton," she murmured around a sip of the white wine in the glass she held between two fingers. "Just go talk to her."

Scowling, Clint shifted over on the railing he was leaning against, moving out of range from his partner's pointy elbow, "We're fine."

She snorted as she looked across the rooftop to where Darcy, wearing a short gray cocktail dress and towering black heels, was chatting animatedly with Pepper and Steve, her hands waving in the air in front of her as she made her point, "If you two were _fine_," Natasha pointedly drew out the syllable. "Then you wouldn't be sulking right now."

"'m not _sulking_."

Natasha leveled a pointed glare at him, and Clint scowled right back before he turned away from her, "It's _fine_."

"Oh please," she rolled her eyes and shifted slightly so he had to look at her. "You've been acting like a scared little pigeon ever since she came in with Thor and Foster. I don't know what you two fought about that night, but it's been _three weeks_. Buck the hell up."

"_Tasha_."

Forcefully placing her glass on the railing, Natasha crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring the unspoken threat in his tone, "It's simple: buy her a drink, ask her how the last couple years have been, and then go, I don't know, have sex in a stairwell or something."

Clint blinked at her, "It is a _wonder_ how you are still single, Natalia Alianovna."

She flicked her fingers into an unflattering sign he barely caught out of the corner of his eye, and he muttered a curse under his breath in reply before pushing away from the railing, "Oh fine, you old _yenta_."

Natasha's quiet laughter followed him as he walked away, and Pepper's hazel eyes lit up when she saw him approach from over Darcy's shoulder, "Specialist Barton!" She waved him over, as if he wasn't already on his way, and Clint thought about deliberately overlooking it, but the weight of Natasha's gaze was heavy on his shoulders as she strongly encouraged him to choose otherwise. "Darcy was just telling us about her time in New Mexico when Thor first arrived."

The woman in question spun around, her eyes flaring for a moment before she realized that her shoes' added height put her pretty much at eye level with him, and after a second her usual smirk returned to her face, "Specifically, I was telling them about the time you almost shot Thor when he broke into SHIELD's not-even-remotely-super-secret base and mud-wrestled with their so-called best-of-the-best."

"We learned from our mistakes with the second one," he stuffed his hands in his pockets, stopping to stand between her and Steve.

"Until it _blew up in the middle of the damn night_."

He smirked and shrugged a shoulder, "Gods and monsters Lewis, what can you do?"

Darcy finally looked him in the eye and smirked, and Clint felt something in his chest loosen a bit as he met her gaze.

After a minute, Steve very obviously cleared his throat, "Hey Pepper, maybe we should go make sure Tony hasn't insulted any city officials yet," he looked over to his right and then winced when he saw who Tony was standing with. "Or, you know, offer to build the mayor a suit of his own."

Grinning, Pepper curled her hand around the elbow he offered, "That is an _excellent_ idea, Captain," she winked at Darcy. "Darcy, Specialist Barton, if you'd please excuse us."

They walked away, and Darcy watched them go with a derisive snort, "Cap _really_ needs to work on his subtle."

"Hey, Mayor Archibald would _definitely _take him up on it."

She blinked and tilted her head as she regarded him.

Shrugging, Clint pulled his hands from the pockets of the pressed black slacks that had been laid out on his bed when he got back from workout that morning—thank you to his pesky partner, more than likely, "Can I buy you a drink?"

"It's an open bar."

He sighed, memories of their argument from the night she arrived and discovered he was living in the Tower too flashing through his mind, "I _was_ going to call you, Darcy."

She took a small step forward, cutting him off, her bright eyes boring into his, and Clint barely breathed before she finally smiled, shaking her head dismissively, "I'm sure you were," she didn't sound like she believed him but she curled her arm through his anyway, the fingers of her other hand drumming against his bicep. "Now how about that drink?"

They stood at the bar on the far side of the rooftop—specifically away from Natasha's amused gaze—waiting for the bartender to make Darcy's scotch and soda when Clint's hearing aids buzzed with a low whirring coming from somewhere behind him.

He curled his hand around her wrist, pushing her behind him, and Darcy jumped as she spun around, "Clint, what are you-"

He cut her off as he raised his other hand, whirling around to glare up at the skies.

Then, there was a bright flash, and Darcy's breath was knocked from her lungs as Clint dove into her, forcing her out of the path of a laser blast from the first in a giant squadron of Doombots bearing down on the party.

"Shit, shit, shit!" Darcy cursed as she clung to Clint's waist as they were thrown over the side of the historic building.

Clint grunted as he grabbed a piece of bent railing, debris falling around them and his hip screaming when it impacted with the corner of the building, "Darce, you good?"

"Yes," she managed, her teeth grinding together as she tried to get a better grip on his waist, one of her heels falling off her feet and _down_, and she swallowed hard. "Kind of."

"Just hold on!"

She gasped, nodding against his back, "Can you pull us up?"

There was another blast, and the entire building shook amidst the guests frightened screams, while distantly they could hear the Iron Man suit's repulsors fire off in quick succession, "Not yet. Just hold on!"

Darcy let out a litany of curses under her breath as she reached up with one hand and curled her fingers around his shoulder, "What are you-"

"Just shut up," she muttered as she climbed up his back, hooking her arms around his neck while her knees pressed tight against his sides. "I'm going to get us out of this."

"_What?_"

She wrapped her fingers around the cuff covering her right wrist and started tugging at the tightly woven laces, "Hey Barton," she muttered through clenched teeth. "You been good lately?"

Laser fire hit the building not five feet to their right, and Clint adjusted his grip on the railing before he spared a look over his shoulder, "What the hell are you-"

"Just wait, _wait_!" She let out a quiet _ha_ when she finally managed to free the leather from her wrist, squeezing it in her fist.

Clint heard the sound of fabric tearing as Darcy curled one arm under his shoulder, followed by the other, "Just don't struggle," she ordered, her mouth right behind his ear. "And when I tell you, push off as hard as you can and let go."

"Are you _insane_?"

Something flapped hard in the air behind him, but all Clint could see were shadows as they slipped a little.

Darcy's grip on his chest became shockingly tight as the Doombots finally realized that there were two massive targets hanging off the side of the building and fired in their direction, "_Now!_"

"Now?"

Lightening flashed across the cloudless sky, "For the love of Thor, _push off_!"

His arms screamed as he lifted them both up, and then he kicked back off the building.

And then they fell.

But instead of plummeting to their deaths like they should have, they only dropped a couple stories before Darcy let out a pained shout, they stopped short midair, and then rose back up, "Darcy?" His eyes were wide as he angled his head back to see the pair of wings sprouting _from her back_, the sun behind them turning them a shadowy black.

"Answers later," she growled, her wings—because _she had wings, _what the _fuck?_—flapping hard and lifting them higher in the air and to the right to avoid another volley of laser fire, and Darcy shouted when a stray blast singed the feathers at the end of her right wing. "Where's your stash?"

"Southwest corner," he shouted over the sounds of another blast, and the thunder and lightening that followed as Darcy ducked under the wing of a dismantled Doombot that was neatly bisected by Cap's shield. "Go!"

Darcy flew to the adjacent side of the roof and dropped him, Clint rolling to a crouch and ducking to a stop under a table where his quiver was propped against a crate of freshly washed drinking glasses.

Standing, Clint took a second to gape at Darcy as she landed at his side, one hand holding the tattered remains of her dress and bra to her chest as she stood on the grass and kicked her other shoe into a ruined flowerbed.

"Darcy?"

Her eyes were narrow as she scanned the surface of the rooftop, Iron Man protecting the major and his assistant on one side while Steve and Natasha stood back to back in front of some cowering wait-staff at the other, "Where's Jane?" She snapped, one arm reaching out and tugging Clint to the ground, her wing shielding them from a spray of shrapnel, and he finally got a decent look at the reddish brown feathers as they arched over him.

"_Darcy_?"

Whirling around, she saw Jane hiding under a broken table, "Come on," she snapped, running over and pulling her to her feet, one hand on Jane's back as her wing came up to cover her, "Time to let the Avengers do what they do best."

"But Darcy, you've got-"

Wrapping her other arm around Jane's waist and letting out a curse as the ruined remains of her dress fell away again and revealing far too much of herself to the world, she kicked them both into the air and started flying back over to the side of the building, "_Yes_, I've got wings. I know."

"No, your _boobs_-"

As he fired off a volley of arrows at one of the robots, Clint barely heard Darcy yell as they disappeared over the side.

"_I know Jane!_"

**Now**

With her arms crossed tight over her chest and the wind whipping her braided hair from one shoulder to the other, Darcy pivoted to face Rhodey, who had flown in for the day at Tony's pestering insistence, "Are you absolutely _sure_ I'm not going to get shot out of the sky by the Air Force as soon as I take off? Because that would really put a damper on my plans for this afternoon."

"Mine too," Clint added from where he was stretched out on his back across the deck and networking one of the four computers they dedicated to monitoring the new body armor that Tony dreamed up for her.

Not only could she release her wings while wearing it, but—and more importantly—it _wouldn't_ fall off her front like her shirts and bras usually did when they were torn to bits by the massive appendages and thus risk her becoming an accidental exhibitionist.

Again.

"I'm serious here," she went on and adjusted the tight halter's collar so it rested flush against her neck with the top edge brushing of it under her jaw. "Because getting shot out of the sky is probably going to hurt a hell of a lot worse than the time I was almost burned at the stake. Both times, actually."

She tossed a reassuring smile at Clint, who sat up, his head smacking against the underside of the table as he gave her that same _look_ he gave her the first she told him the stories—once because she had been cocky and the other time because _everyone_ who was a woman was being similarly persecuted, whether for good reason or not—as they lay together late one night in the privacy of her loft.

What she remembered of it, at least, since it had been a _long_ time ago.

Rhodey pinched the bridge of his nose, "The military is aware that we're performing a training exercise."

"Training exercise," Tony giggled—light actually, straight up giggled, and Rhodey threw a paper cup at him, but it deflected off the shoulder of the Iron Man suit before landing a few feet away.

With a tablet in one hand, Bruce walked over to Darcy and applied three monitors to the front of the armor, one over her heart and two more down by her hips where the edges of it curled around her hipbones and stayed flat against her skin with the help of a space-age adhesive, "Try not to knock these off," he suggested as he walked around her and pressed two more on her lower back where her skin was free of feathers.

She smirked as she took the last two monitors, pressing one to her right shoulder and the other to the inside of her left wrist, "I'll do what I can," she glanced over her shoulder at Jane, who stood in front of the monitors and was typing rapidly on the keyboard in front of her. "Well, how do I look?"

Looking up, Jane arched a brow as she took in the space-age top, which was paired with Darcy's rattiest skinny jeans and a pair of faded blue Converse that were falling apart at the seams, and she rolled her eyes, "Quite frankly, a little ridiculous. Comm. check?"

Twisting the tiny black device Bruce handed her into her ear, she tapped it to turn it on, "Test, one two, one two," she quipped. "But I won't end up with my boobs censored on the cover of every major magazine _and _uncensored all over the Internet, _again_, so I think we're good."

She glanced down at Clint and winked, and then walked over to Thor and Tony, who were both ready for the air, "You two ready for this?"

With a booming laugh, Thor clapped her on the shoulder, and she stumbled a little, "Of course Darcy. This will be a most entertaining outing! I look forward to seeing what your kind is capable of."

"Just try not to turn me into a fried chicken. This is tag, not skeet shooting."

Thor smiled wide and nodded, and the Iron Man suit's faceplate slipped into place as they both took off and hovered in the air a few feet above the building.

Rolling her shoulders, Darcy took a deep breath as she felt the skin of her back tingle when her wings pulled away from her skin, shifting from raised impressions across her back to a pair of massive, feathery limbs that dragged across the patio as she took a step forward to resettle them.

Darcy reached back with her right hand and tapped the trigger hidden in the bottom edge of the armor, and a set of thin pieces of the same material popped out from the sides, layering one over the other, back and forth, to cover and protect her lower back, "Ready?"

"Go for it Darcy," Jane called.

She grinned, bouncing on her heels before she darted across the roof to Iron Man's landing platform, and launched off the side of New York's tallest building with a happy holler.

With the chance to stretch her wings out, really stretch them out for the first time in _years_, Darcy took a few circuits around the Tower, undoubtedly scaring the crap out of the staffers working on the building's middle levels, and then flew up to meet Thor and Iron Man, "So," she grinned. "Test number one, can Darcy actually fly? Yes I can."

Iron Man's repuslors whirred as he flew around her in a slow circle, and she could _feel_ his sensors scanning her wings and her back, "These _can't_ be big enough to support your weight."

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, "They're _twice my size,_ Stark," she twitched one out, the long, arching bone that supported the feathers smacking against his armored arm.

"But they should be at _least_ three times your size in order for you to actually take flight!"

Rolling her shoulders, she turned in the to face him, "Well I'm currently hovering hundreds of feet in the air with my _twice my size_ wings, so sorry your calculations don't mesh with reality."

"I don't like it."

She winked at Thor, whose chuckle echoed over the wind, and she shrugged, "Like I said, sorry that fairies and physics don't mix. Except I'm not."

"_While this is all entirely hilarious,_" Bruce's deadpan echoed on the comm. "_Can we please get started?_"

A wicked grin spread across Darcy's face as she gently flapped her wings so she could drift closer to Thor, "Well then, in the immortal words of schoolyard brats everywhere," she reached out and punched his shoulder. "Tag, you're it!"

With a snap, her wings folded against her back, and she dropped below them both, nearly landing back on the Tower's roof before she unfurled them and took off toward the water, both men in pursuit.

They put her through test after test for over an hour, monitoring her speed, how her body endured things like sudden altitude and temperature changes, and even how her skeletal structure reacted to the strain the wings put on it whenever she moved too sharply or did something that would break the back of an otherwise normal human.

In all the long years of her life, Darcy had never question it.

It just _worked_.

Finally, Darcy landed back on the roof, stumbling and laughing as Clint caught her with an arm around her waist, one of her wings nearly clipping the side of his head before she managed to pull them both against her back, a hard twitch of her shoulders pulling both wings back over the side of the building.

"I don't think I've had this much fun since I was first learning to fly!" She gushed as Jane handed her a bottle of water, and she drank down the entire thing, and then the fancy energy drink in Jane's other hand, while Tony's robots peeled him out of the suit and Thor landed after him.

Clint's hand slipped up her back as she nuzzled against his neck, and Tony clapped his hands as he joined them, "I think we've got ourselves some more air support. Perfect!"

"We have _Sam._"

"You can never have too much help," he poked her in the shoulder, and she rolled her eyes as she looked at him. "Now Darcy, this is extremely important: have you thought of your superhero codename yet?"

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," Steve coughed as he made his way out on the patio, Natasha at his heels.

Curling her arm around Clint's waist and slipping her fingers under the hem of his t-shirt, Darcy grinned as he shivered when the cold of her skin touched his spine, and she looked at Steve, "If you want to see me go hand-to-hand with Natasha, we can totally put that on the books," she met the woman's answering grin with a smirk of her own as she curled closer to Clint, adrenalin thrumming through her veins and making her shake. "I've been fighting in wars for hundreds of years before you were even born, Cap."

He blinked, and then shook his head bashfully, "Sorry, I forget."

Yawning, she leaned deeper into Clint's side, and his hand pressed tighter to her back, "I know, I know, I look like I'm twelve."

"You definitely do _not_," Clint snorted, curling his other arm under her legs when her knees gave out.

She buried her nose against his neck and slung an arm over his shoulders, "Oops."

Clint shook his head as he looked back to her wings, the sunlight glimmering off the clusters of silver on the inner sides, and then back at the door, "Uh Darce, you're going to need to do something about those."

"Eh, meh, I think I'm gonna need a minute," she slurred as she buried her head against his shoulder, and her stomach growled loudly. "Oh _shit_, I'm hungry. I could eat a horse. Two horses even."

Distantly, she heard Jane tell Bruce to grab a syringe so they could check her glucose levels, and then someone was grabbing her arm and there was a quick pinch as they drew her blood, "Ugh. I think I forgot this part."

Clint's arms tightened around her, "Darcy, you all right?"

"Probably. Uh, are you _spinning_?"

"No. _Jane!_"

**After Lunch (And A Hearty Snack…And Dinner)**

"You never mentioned what happened to your people, the other fairies," Clint said later that night as they sat in his room, Darcy in the center of his bed with her arms wrapped around a pillow while he sat behind her with his legs bracketing her hips.

Her wings were spread out across the bed, the ends with their large and frayed feathers hanging off the sides and brushing against the hardwood floor, and Clint was gently carding his fingers through the mottled gray and black feathers on her right side, smoothing them out and settling everything back to rights like he so often did with the fletching on his arrows.

Countless bird jokes were flickering through her mind, and she resisted the urge to blurt them out, shuddering as she glanced at him over her shoulder, "I really wouldn't know," she swallowed, and then looked back down at the massive white pillow that was the only thing keeping her covered.

Moving his hands to her shoulders, Clint stroked the notch in her wing where it melded with her spine from the old wound that never healed right with the side of his thumb, "Darcy?"

She reached up and patted his hand, "I wasn't really accepted by my people because I was so interested in spending time around humans, even when they decided they wanted our resources and our magic more than they wanted peace," she absently stroked her fingers over the back of his hand as she lost herself in her memories. "I would hide among the humans, using the magic in that cuff to blend in. One day, I went back home, where home was at least, and they were all gone."

"Have you ever gone looking for them?"

She shrugged again, "Not really?" She looked back at him. "Sometimes I feel like I abandoned them, but your world is just so _interesting_. I mean, I doubt my people have had any of the advancements humans have. It's kind of why I ended up with Jane, I think. Just look at what she's doing, the _worlds_ she found. It's _amazing_."

"Some of it," he agreed after he took a minute to wrest down the memories of being possessed by Loki all those years ago, his thumbs slipping to gently run up and down the base of her neck until he resettled.

Darcy noticed—she always did—and she turned a little, reaching back to smooth the frown lines off his forehead, "Some of it."

Leaning forward, he kissed her, and then gently tugged her back against him as he rested against the headboard, her wings pressing against his chest, "Will you ever go looking for them again?"

She rubbed her thumb back and forth against the inside of his right knee, "I don't know," she hummed, nudging her head against his chin. "My mother was very long lived by the time I was young, and all my siblings and half-siblings were so much older than me. I doubt they'd even remember me anyway. They probably won't be thrilled if they found out that I'm still up to no good."

"I'm pretty sure you're up to plenty good," he murmured, his mouth pressed against the side of his head.

Darcy squeezed his knee, "I'm pretty sure you're more than a little biased."

"Let me be."

Sitting up, she pushed the pillow away and turned around, her wings melding into her back and over her legs as she straddled his hips and ran her hands down his bare chest before she rested them on the sides of his head and pressed her mouth to his, "I guess I can do that," she murmured. "Anyway, the important thing is that my family is all right here."

One hand running up and down the impressions on her back, Clint stared up into her eyes and stole another kiss from her parted mouth, "Yeah?"

"_Yes_."

**Some Months Later**

It was the middle of the night when Clint and Darcy's phones blared with the piercing alarm that signaled an assemble call, and she groaned, rubbing her hand over her eyes as he rolled over her to grab them both from the nightstand and silence them.

"JARVIS?" Glancing at the clock and wincing at the time, she coughed sleep from her voice as she pushed the covers off her and Clint rolled off the other side of the bed. "Sit rep?"

"Agent Romanov has received a distress call from a former SHIELD agent known as the Cavalry. Hydra agents are pursuing her and her team on a small island in the Philippines. Air support was requested."

A yawn muffled her first attempt at a reply, and she cleared her throat and tried again, "Who's the Cavalry?" She murmured as she passed barefoot over to Clint's closet, her spare uniform—made from the same material as Steve's stealth-suit—neatly folded on one of the built-in shelves so she wouldn't have to run downstairs to her own suite.

While she pulled her on her shirt, gloves, and gauntlets, Clint was tugging the neoprene tank top he wore under his vest over his head, "Legendary SHIELD agent," his voice was muffled by the shirt before his head popped free and he handed Darcy her pants. "One of the best."

"_You and Tasha_ were SHIELD's best," she muttered as she stepped into them, grabbing her belt and pulling it tight.

He smirked as he belted his own pants and reached for his thigh holster, which was waiting for the sidearm already loaded in their shared weapons case on the Quinjet, "The last generation," he tugged her to him, his hand slipping up her back and running over the feather impressions as he pressed his mouth to hers. "Saddle up baby, I think things are about to get weird."

Pulling back, Darcy snatched a pair of glasses off the shelf and pushed them on her nose, blinking twice as the display—similar to the HUD in the Iron Man suit's mask—activated and quickly cycled through the calibration tests, and then she smirked, "You know how much I love weird," she kissed him quickly before stepping into her boots, her hands shifting her hair into a French braid.

Clint grabbed his bow and quiver and led the way out of the bedroom, and Darcy grinned up at him as they waited for the elevator to take them up to the landing pad, "Let's go rescue a SHIELD agent."


End file.
